I'm a professional Delphi developer who works from home. I don't really have anyone to argue with, about technical stuff, so hopefully this blog will allow me to get things off my chest.

Monday, 23 February 2009

What did you learn today?

Do you ever wonder how accountants manage to get out of bed every day and go to work? Apart from the occasional, new tax law, their profession has basically stayed the same for hundreds of years. An accountant is basically doing the same thing today, that he did yesterday.

I think we're in a profession that by definition is interesting every day. You don't even have to swap technologies every couple of days to learn something new. I've been doing Object Pascal and Delphi for a long time now, but I learnt something new in Delphi today, and today is no exception. In fact the days I learn nothing are few and far between.

Some nights I can't sleep because I've just figured out a way for the algorithm I've been toiling over to work 50% faster than I had been currently implementing it. I actually wake up most mornings, eager to fire up Delphi. I think we're lucky.

The great thing is, that no matter what I learnt or did today, tomorrow will be much better. One of the questions I answered on Stack Overflow, was What was the first program you wrote, and you were proud of? I thought about this for while, and each time I thought of something cool I wrote, I immediately thought of something cooler I did a little later. So finally I answered thus :

I always think the software I wrote yesterday sucks, the software I'm writing today is cool, and the software I'm going to write tomorrow will rock!

I wonder if on accountant forums (do they exist) anybody ever asks What's the first balance sheet you did, and you were proud of? It just doesn't have the same ring to it, does it?

Software business is far more interesting as an Architect and/or Analyst than just coding :)

As one of the above mentioned(!), I've been part of the inner working of many organizations, without having to cope with their boring everyday life: I've just got in, learnt every last drop, done my job, and left!

Now that's what I consider cool about software: You are always a part of the decision making team, you are in the middle of all the most valuable information they gather/use/process and learn their job better than themselves, and every new project is really a new life and - pretty much - a new job! Most of the times you are challenged, which to me is the definitive cool factor of the job.